Surgical innovation and multidisciplinary management have allowed children born with univentricular physiology congenital heart disease to survive into adulthood. An estimated global population of 70 000 patients have undergone the Fontan procedure and are alive today, most of whom are <25 years of age. Several unexpected consequences of the Fontan circulation include Fontan-associated liver disease. Surveillance biopsies have demonstrated that virtually 100% of these patients develop clinically silent fibrosis by adolescence. As they mature, there are increasing reports of combined heart-liver transplantation resulting from advanced liver disease, including bridging fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma, in this population. In the absence of a transplantation option, these young patients face a poor quality of life and overall survival. Acknowledging that there are no consensus guidelines for diagnosing and monitoring Fontan-associated liver disease or when to consider heart transplantation versus combined heart-liver transplantation in these patients, a multidisciplinary working group reviewed the literature surrounding Fontan-associated liver disease, with a specific focus on considerations for transplantation.

A retrospective study of 741 patients with medullary thyroid carcinoma diagnosed between 1967 and 1991 was carried out by members of the German Medullary Thyroid Carcinoma Study Group to evaluate prognostic factors. A total of 559 patients (75%) were considered to have sporadic disease, and 182 (25%) had the familial type. The sex ratio (male to female) was 1:1.4 in sporadic disease patients, and the mean age at diagnosis was 45.9 years (range 5-81 years). For familial disease patients the sex ratio was 1:1.1, and the mean age at diagnosis was 33.4 (range 5-77 years). The follow-up time for 630 patients ranged from 1 month to 20.8 years (mean 13.0 years). The overall adjusted survival rate was 86.7% at 5 years and 64.2% at 10 years. In a univariate analysis the stage of disease at diagnosis, age, sex, and type of disease (sporadic, familial) were relevant prognostic factors, with a better prognosis for young female patients with familial disease and diagnosed at an early stage. In a multivariate proportional hazards analysis, the difference in the survival rate of patients with familial disease versus those with the sporadic form disappeared, while prognostic information provided by age and sex was still significant. The poorer prognosis of patients with sporadic medullary thyroid carcinoma may be related to the patients' older age at detection and more advanced tumor stage at diagnosis. There seems to be no difference in biological behavior between tumors of the sporadic and those of the familial type.

The accurate identification of alcohol-exposed pregnancies represents a significant challenge in the development of FAEE detection cutoffs to maximize the sensitivity and specificity of the test. We present several options for the improvement of exposure assessment in future studies of FAEE as biomarkers for PAE.

This large retrospective analysis suggests a possible beneficial effect of regional anaesthetic techniques on oncological outcomes after prostate surgery for cancer; however, these findings need to be confirmed (or refuted) in randomized trials.